An Orwellian Interlude

I originally posted this a few days ago on "Fables and Riddles." Since the topic is a crossover of both political and literary concerns, I'm putting it up here as well:

I recently happened across this classic (but, up until now, unread by me) 1946 essay by George Orwell, called "Politics and the English Language." I loved it so much, that I thought I'd
pass it along.

This essay embodies everything I find wonderful and heroic in Orwell's philosophy of writing. Like the modernists who preceded him by one generation, he seeks clarity and freshness of expression. Unlike the post-modernists who followed him, he believes that there is a demonstrably correct solution to the muddle of meaning(s), and is able to lay it out convincingly.

The crux of this essay, and, indeed, of all of Orwell's best writing, is that there is a direct connection between using language well and thinking well. And by "well," I do not mean something comparative, as in "better than the average person," but rather as in "well enough to arrive at the truth." For him, having the facility to systematically arrive at and know the truth is crucial for a participant in a democracy. When language degrades, whether due to neglect or deliberate abuse, we lose the tool with which we accurately distinguish true arguments from false ones. Imprecise language leads to a lazy thought-process, becoming a bromide of sorts. Overused cliches, mixed metaphors, and arch-sounding double negatives act as soporifics for writer and reader alike. They allow us to pretend we're paying attention when in fact we are not.

It is easy to see in this essay a precursor to 1984, which was published just a couple of years later. Here, Orwell documents the danger of language in decline - in 1984 he describes its fall. In light of his observations , we can understand better what made such phrases as "War is Peace," and "Freedom is Slavery" so terrifying. It is not just that they negate themselves. It is that, while knowing their obvious logical fallacies, there is a part of them that seems true anyway. We think we can imagine a definition of "freedom" that feels like "slavery" - perhaps a freedom that came with great risks and insecurities. We can imagine a "war" that provides security and purpose, and, perhaps as a result, "peace" - at least for some. We realize that we have already internalized some of the linguistic mirror-tricks that can one day produce visions of Big Brother.

Orwell's ideas are much needed today. There is a great, sad irony in the fact that numerous political commentators have drawn hasty (but apt) comparisons between the Bush Administration's relentless abuse of language and Orwellian "double-speak". I say it is a "sad irony" because the comparison is frequently made but never explored. As a result, we have already become bored with the comparison - it is such a cliche, after all! - without ever grasping just how frighteningly apt it is. Whether it is the ever-shifting definitions of "war" and "security", or our increasingly vague understanding of what Bush means when he refers to "the people," "victory," and most especially "freedom," it is clear that we have ceased to analyze the meanings of these words and phrases in the contexts in which they are used. (Or take one of Rumsfeld's most famous Zen Koans: "Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence." As a matter of fact, it is. One need only revisit the definition of the word "evidence" for about thirty seconds to see why this is the case. In doing so, one will already be miles above the level of discourse in mainstream politics.)

The thing is, in the case of our present-day leaders, nothing is careless when it comes to word-choice. Rumsfeld, Cheney, Rove, et al - these folks know what they are doing. Our media analysts don’t take them to task for it; they are either directly complicit in the dumbing down of discourse, or they lack the imagination to see how language may be carefully obfuscated. Common words like "freedom" and "security" have meanings that differ, but overlap, depending on context. One way to blur these distinctions is to use different definitions of the same word repeatedly in the same speech - with repetition, it becomes more difficult to keep track of the exact argument. This leaves it to the audience who, with the "good faith" assumption that speaker means what they want him to mean, subconsciously fills in the gaps.

Let's take words like "victory," or "winning," as in "winning the War on Terror." Its meaning is clear enough, is it not? We have a "know it when I see it" feel about these words. And yet, as recently as last year, the Bush Administration was able to fuzz-ify them enough to make it appear that their Iraq policy was different in principle from those Democrats who asked for a "timetable" for pulling out of Iraq. Bush's stay-the-course "winning" strategy was contrasted against the Democrats' "cut-and-run" defeatism. In fact, an analysis of Bush's own statements elsewhere reveals this contrast to be meaningless - the difference between the Democratic strategy and the Republican one amounted to logistics. For all his rhetoric about "defeating the terrorists," Bush and his cabinet had long ago stated, repeatedly, that the goal in Iraq was to train the Iraqi security forces to "take over" for the Coalition in the fight against the "insurgency." In other words, both parties foresaw leaving Iraq with the insurgency intact. In fact, they simply disagreed as to when they might best discuss cutting and running. By carefully picking his words and playing with context (I'm sure he had help), he was able to make totally contradictory statements that only conjoin at the obfuscated definition of the word "winning." His "winning" - i.e., not discussing the inevitable cut-and-run just yet, was made to seem like "winning" - defeating (read: "suppressing" or "killing") the "terrorists" (not "insurgents" in this case...always go more general when you want to inspire!). Examined logically, Bush's "victory" is defined only in comparison to itself. It is "victorious" to leave a country at war with the "enemy" still at large and fighting - as long as we don't set a timetable for it just yet because, well, that's what the President says victory is.

I feel like I could write a book on this topic...certainly, I will be expanding upon this idea in the future months. The control over our political lives is largely brought about by controlling political ideas, and complex ideas are at the mercy of the language used to express or obfuscate them. In the meantime, we have Orwell here to remind us that language is not some happenstance occurrence which we may safely leave to its own devices, but rather “an instrument which we shape for our own purposes.”

So much for keeping literature separate from politics...